Berthe's mouse lemur, one of the world's smallest primates, is one of 600 new species discovered on Madagacsar in the past decade. Photograph: Harald Schuetz/WWF/PA

More than 600 new species have been discovered in Madagascar's unique habitats in the past decade, among them 385 plants, 42 invertebrates, 17 fish, 69 amphibians, 61 reptiles and 41 mammals, according to a report published by the conservation group WWF.

Eyecatching new species include Berthe's mouse lemur, bottom right above, which is 10cm long and weighs only 30g, making it the smallest known primate. There's also a 4cm-long Komac's golden orb spider that spins webs up to a metre in diameter and the cork bark leaf-tailed gecko, which looks just like the bark of a tree, allowing it to hide effortlessly from predators.

Unfortunately, WWF also highlights that such remarkable diversity on Madagascar is fragile, as the country reels from political and economic turmoil in recent years.

"We blithely think that we have a really good understanding of the natural world and what's there, but the fact that we can go out to these places and find, on a regular basis, new species suggests that we don't know the world half as well as we think," said Mark Wright, conservation science adviser at WWF-UK. "That reinforces our desire to protect it because what we don't want to do is destroy these places before we even recognise it existed there."

Madagascar is a jewel in biodiversity terms because of its isolation from the major continents. "It split from Africa a long time ago and then subsequently split from the Indian block 80m years ago. It has had 80m years for evolution to have a bit of fun," said Wright. "It is a very odd island. In terms of its geography, it helps speciation. There's a mountain ridge down the middle, so on the east of the island you've got rainforest, but everything on the west is a rain shadow. So you get an enormous variety of environments from the very wet to the very dry. It's a fantastic range of environments into which species can adapt."

But such species that the unique conditions create is are vulnerable. The vast majority of people in Madagascar still use wood for heating, cooking and building, leading to enormous pressures on forest habitats. As the human population has expanded in recent years, there has been a rise in slash-and-burn agriculture. Over the past 20 years, Madagascar has lost more than 1 million hectares of forest, and in the aftermath of a coup in March 2009, the rainforests were pillaged for hardwoods such as rosewood, destroying tens of thousands of hectares of some of the island's most biologically diverse national parks – including Marojejy, Masoala, Makira and Mananara.

Protecting the island's biodiversity will have to involve locals, said Wright, and it will have to include incentives for them to look after their forests. "If they have no practical way of making a living, of course they are going to turn to the natural resources sector and see what they can get from that, and who wouldn't do it?"

Among the species finds on Madagascar are potential economic crops. "They've found six new species of coffee," said Wright. "Economically, it's phenomenally important and, at the same time, we know that with things like climate change, they will always be vulnerable. So it's great to have that store of new genetic stock that you can draw on. You have six new species that are quite diverse – some are hairy, some have beans twice as big as the Arabica beans that we normally use for coffee. Suddenly there is a whole new batch of genetic material that we could dip into in order to work on the coffees we use at the moment."

There is a long way to go, Wright added, but he was optimistic. "There are some signs that things are good – there are growing local groups who are trying to conserve biodiversity. There is a local recognition and a need to protect it for their own reasons – that is very healthy."